Pete Wright's Radio Weblog
Musings on anything and everything, but mainly code!



Subscribe to "Pete Wright's Radio Weblog" in Radio UserLand.

Click to see the XML version of this web page.

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.
 

 

27 May 2004
 

Have Wiley taking the branding thing too far?

Wrox Press always had a very distinctive brand. I remember talking to one of the managing editors years ago and he mentioned his vision for a "sea of red" on the shelves of major bookstore chains. By and large they succeeded in accomplishing that. When Wrox collapsed Wiley bought a couple of books and the Wrox brand. Now, one thing I always disagreed with, with my own Wrox titles, was the decision to stick photographs of the authors on the front cover. Just because it worked for Peter Norton back in the 80's didn't mean it would work for an entire line of books from different authors. More to the point I hate seeing my own picture. But the upper echelons insisted that it was important for readers to associate with the author in a very strong way.

Since Wiley now own the Wrox brand they have taken to publishing Wrox branded books the same way. But, have they taken it too far? I mean, check this out

Now I'm sure Helen knows her stuff when it comes to Access - but does that picture really entice you to buy the book? Do you look at that picture and think "Wow, there's a friendly looking face, I'm going to enjoy reading what she says?".

I'm saying no more on the subject - I don't want to cross that line drawn in the virual sand that says "Libellous".

 


1:00:12 PM    comment []

Visual Sourcesafe 2005 details released on MSDN.

OK, now I'm drooling. Everybody knows that one of the most important tools in a developers arsenal has to be effective source and version control software. Historically in the Microsoft space this has meant the much lamented Visual Sourcesafe. Sourcesafe is a great tool if you are working on your own, and pretty neat if you are working in a 2 or 3 person team. However, it doesn't scale up to large teams, and has big problems and annoyances when it comes to being used on very active projects and projects that have large online components (such as ASP.NET projects - ever tried to put an ASP.NET project into Sourcesafe and then rebuild the project on another team member's machine?).

Microsoft have listened to all the complaints levelled against Sourcesafe and seem to have addressed most of them with Visual Sourcesafe 2005. The new product supports remote access over HTTP for non-office based workers, increased capacity (now up to 4 gig of storage), support for regional timezones and languages and, at long last, enhanced support for web projects. Find out more at MSDN.


10:01:07 AM    comment []

Sorry for the lack of posts the last couple of days. On Tuesday I had an entire day of meetings at Edenbrook's offices in London to look at some very cool ESB technology and to have a demo of Skillsoft's Books24x7 and ELearning solutions. The latter is something I'd come across before at Avalaugh (Avanade) and is very cool indeed. It's basically a fully indexed set of about 4000 books available online. Imagine you're working on some great new product and you run up against a technical wall with, for instance, WSE. With Books24x7 you just log in, type WSE in the search engine and up come a list of books that mention the technology. You can then further refine the search to get to just the set of books that you feel would be most appropriate and then dive straight into the chapters concerned. It's a great learning and development accelerator. Their online e-learning course offerings look awesome too, with complete training programs offered for just basic technical learning as well as the official Microsoft, Oracle etc certification tracks.

Yesterday was spent at Legoland for an Edenbrook Company Planning day. Obviously I can't say very much about the content of the day (we're going to take over the world, so naturally I can't let you know how just yet). I can say though that it was a great day out. It's been a while since I've had the chance to mingle with all the consultants at Edenbrook and chat about technology, their projects and the future of the company. Our directors have some fantastic plans, and unlike some similar events I've attended at other companies our plans are both exciting AND realistic. The future looks very bright indeed. I also got to have some neat discussions about technology evangelism ( a topic naturally close to my heart ) and have some great ideas for things I can do now to help drive the company forward and add some very real value to my role.

I did find something interesting when I checked my mail this morning though. It seems someone posted a comment to one of my previous blog entries, a mysterious semi-anonymous chap calling themselves s@avanade.com. Since I know that that's not the correct format for Avalaugh email addresses I can only assume that the person for some reason wants some anonymity. Fair enough. I know how nasty and vindictive some Avalaugh managers and directors can be. Anyway, the poster asked "Why do you refer to Avanade as Avalaugh?". Well, it's a long story, but the long and short of it is that after having worked there for 8 months, and having had various lengthy chats with past and present employees of that "company" since I left I see Avanade as nothing more than an industry joke - hence Avalaugh.

 


9:52:44 AM    comment []


Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website. © Copyright 2004 Pete Wright.
Last update: 09/06/2004; 08:31:59.
This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.
May 2004
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          
Apr   Jun